Scary Adventures and the Evolution of Disney’s Dark Rides Reviewed

The first couple chapters of the book offered a good glimpse of the history of dark rides. I did not learn anything new though. In fact there were a few things I was disappointed by. They do not mention some of the earliest dark rides which used donkeys to pull the carts. They discuss the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition ride A Trip to the Moon but there were dark rides before it. It also mentioned Blackpool’s Ghost Train as the first Ghost Train but Pratter also makes that claim. While I side with Blackpool since there is some debate the two should both be mentioned.

We then learn about the Disney dark rides starting at Disneyland. Again I would have liked a little more information. For instance Mr Toad’s Wild Ride is only about a page long and did not include things like that it had originally been planned as a roller coaster. I was at first surprised how short some of the other major rides like the Haunted Mansion were but later found that was because they were covered in greater detail later. I noticed some grammatical errors like “it’s a small world,” the rest of the ride titles were not in parenthesis and all capitalized. Theme Park Press books often have some errors and even my titles had them.

The current and old attractions were included. Each chapter covered each park along with a little more information before and after the listed parks. These sections helped the book be less formualistic though it made things a little confusing as in the case previously mentioned where the Haunted Mansion was not well covered but covered in more detail later.


They also included some unbuilt concepts. There were some not included in my book Disney Ubuilt but there were no attractions I had not heard of before. I had not included them because there was either little evidence they were more than rumors or I learned about them later. They also featured some information about coming attractions.

The book includes information about dark rides of other parks. The problem here is that it is American and Eurocentric. No mention is made about rides outside of these areas. Pratter is also not mentioned which is a shame because it is one of the best parks for dark rides with tons of Ghost Trains and other classic century old dark rides. While the quality of some Asian country dark rides is lacking countries like Japan have some excellent examples.

I did not learn anything from this read but I am an author of multiple books on popular culture. Many readers may learn a great deal from this book. If you do not know about the foreign Disney parks, extinct attractions, Western River Expedition, or Rolly Crump you will learn an enormous amount from this book. If all of those are familiar to you don’t expect to learn much. I still think it is a good book for the right audience and even an enjoyable read for an expert. I recommend the digital edition over the print since it is a good book but it does not offer enough new information for the die hard fan.

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